


I Thought You Were Dead

by Caligraphunky



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Android AU, Gen, Minor OC - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-29 13:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caligraphunky/pseuds/Caligraphunky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes a lot of projects to make a successful company, but not all projects are successful. When Jacob and Kane have a falling out, Jacob decides to leave before the new techno-paradise, Detroit Deluxe, is completed. He runs into a relic of a past creation while trying to make a new life in the quickly-forming undercity. (Android!Chuck AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps I have fallen out with Motorcity a bit, but this story won't leave me alone. It's probably the best thing I've written in a long time, so I couldn't not post it, and I still like Android!Chuck AU regardless.
> 
> Enjoy!

“I thought you were dead.”

This wasn’t the way Chuck wanted to be reunited with his creator, but he promised he’d be honest with himself it ever happened, and, really he was just glad Jacob was still here. Moving around and talking and thinking. Living. As humans do. And as he didn’t, not really.

Sure could’ve gone without Jacob’s look of pity though.

“Well, that makes us even. I thought you’d been dismantled.” Jacob dropped the scrap metal he’d been scavenging, hopping over the junkyard debris which glinted in the sun that wasn’t blocked by the walls slowly encroaching on and over Detroit.

In Chucks dreams he pictured hugs, slaps on the back, a few minor tweaks to fix a squeaky knee joint or something and then he could go live with Jacob for the rest of his life and learn what he were supposed to do if not guiding people through Deluxe and he would look exactly the same as he did the last time Chuck saw him, five years ago.  
Instead, he can just see his graying roots and the shadows playing on the heavy lines of his face and Chuck can’t hug him because he’s too busy holding his hand. His own, up, by the wrist, the torn wires hanging down from the shoulder socket. Chuck knew that the pity look was deserved, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel like some kind of useless. Self-repair programming is tough to enact without both arms and life down in the space slowly becoming known as “Motorcity” was just as hard for a rogue android as for a rouge human.

Jacob’s “store” was out of the way, which made Chuck feel a little better about his situation, that he might not be followed to a tiny little grocer’s shop that smelled like food had rotted away on the shelves. any words were exchanged. He went and Chuck followed, and now he sat precariously on a broken shelf while Jacob fixed his arm and patched up the rips and tears in his artificial skin.

“So, how’d you get out?” 

Chuck looked down at the floor, picked at a piece of lint on the rag he’d tied up into a shirt, and Jacob stopped tightening his screws.

“I…climbed,” Chuck says, uncomfortable with the sensation of circuits firing back up in his arm. 

“You climbed.”

“Over a low part in the wall.”

Jacob lowered the wobbly screwdriver to look at him. The “wall” was quickly becoming a dome, stretching over the ruins of Michigan, closing in the sun, turning the broken city black as gangrene. People had gone over, but only from the inside to the out.

“Must’ve been dangerous to go alone.”

Chuck knew what he was asking, and turned his head further away from Jacob, hoping it would answer the question he knew was hiding in that statement. He didn’t want say it.  
He pursed his lips but didn’t say more and went back to his repairs. Chuck stared at the floor through his bangs, fidgeting and kicking his feet a little. Jacob didn’t seem to want to continue the conversation.

Chuck did.

“Why did you leave?”

Jacob stopped working on Chuck’s arm again, moving to stand in front of Chuck, to look him in the eyes. He did his best to oblige, pushing his hair out of his face. He must have been looking for an answer in Chuck’s face. He wished he could think anything other than that Jacob looked even older than he did a few hours ago. Jacob sighed and patted Chuck on the shoulder.

“Kane…got a little too intense for me. We had a fight about how to change Detroit for the better, and I split.” He says it like that’s all there is to it, like Jacob didn’t just up and vanish in the middle of the night and left Chuck and all his other projects in Kane’s hands. 

“I think you’re good,” he said, turning away. “Just let me know if anything else feels off, alright?” Chuck nods.

“You can stay if you want,” he continued, gesturing around the shop with one hand as he walked over to put his tools away, “Here with me. There ain’t much. Can barely grow enough to feed myself sometimes, but, heh, you don’t eat much. Got a generator out back” Jacob went to wipe the empty shelves with a rag he pulled out of a bucket of yellow water. “I know it won’t be like the good ol’ days but…”

He didn’t have to continue. Where else could Chuck go but back in the trash?

There were five androids in the “good ol’ days,” and they were all supposed to be a scientific marvel. They were a scientific marvel, at least if Kane and Jacob had anything to say about it. Kane built them up to the citizens of Detroit as the absolute nadir of human engineering, proof that anything was possible and he and Jacob had tried to live up to it. After all, how could a “ruined” world build perfect human analogues to aid the real thing?

They didn’t need to eat, but they could if no electricity was available. They were installed with a revolutionary A.I. that could analyze and react to any situation in an appropriate manner. They learned. They adapted, and they were built to help people. Find and protect people in danger, direct those who were lost, find food and supplies with nary a need for compensation while the real humans could focus on building a better Detroit.

Chuck didn’t really remember how it happened, exactly. Jacob suggested that he hit his head in the fall that dislocated his arm, but the truth was that Chuck didn’t think the information was important at the time. He only stored what he needed for the first few months.

It was during a test, one of many he underwent to test functionality and cognition. There was a pit too dark to see the bottom. Kane tossed something -a dummy, he thought- down in there, and told Chuck and the other droids to go get it. Unit Chuck looked into the pit and asked “is it dangerous?”

That was all, and it seemed innocuous enough, but it was apparently something wrong to do. There had been questions before: “How deep is it?” “Is there something else at the bottom that would cause a threat to the object down there?” “Where is a harness I may use to hold the object while I climb out?”

But “is it dangerous” was wrong somehow. Kane stopped the exercise and stood three inches away from Chuck, the reasons for which he couldn’t understand. He didn’t understand the jolt in his chest when Kane looked in his eyes or the way he was reading Kane as a towering giant when he was shorter than him. But he understood he was in trouble.

“What did you say?”

“I…asked if it was dangerous.”

“Dangerous to the dummy…or to yourself?”

“…I do not understand the question.”

“Abe, leave him alone.” Jacob got between them, pushing Kane out of the way. “He’s doing exactly what we programmed him to do: collect data on his environment and act accordingly. No need to bite his head off.”

After that, there was talk among the five. At first it was normal, robots asking things like “Am I in your path, unit DONNA?” and “Will you aid me in moving this box, unit SAM?” and then…somebody inquired as to the nature of the earlier question.

“What was meant by ‘is it dangerous?’”

“I…wanted to know if there was danger present to this unit as well as the object to be retrieved.”

“Danger to the unit?”

“The unit did not wish to be damaged.“

“The unit had a job.”

“Yes, but…there was no sense in damaging the unit if it was unnecessary.”

It snowballed from there. Thinking about protecting the unit led to thinking about the unit an individual. That led to discussions about the work, which turned into discussions about other things. And then came opinions about those things. And then came different opinions.

And then there were personalities.

Things changed rapidly after that. Chuck almost never saw Mr. Kane anymore, but Jacob and the rest of the science team became regular fixtures in his charging chambers. He conducted regular interviews with him and the others, asking questions about their developing emotions. Cognitive tests, personality tests, reflex tests, all reflecting his progress towards sentience in a thick red line on graph paper drawn on with a pen and ruler and, later, printouts with exact numbers by each point on the chart. 

It was on personality test three or so that they started giving extra attention to him and around five before Chuck noticed. It would have nice if it was because he was smarter or more perceptive or faster to grow than his fellow androids but, of course, that wasn’t it.

“I just..feel really worked up sometimes,” Chuck leaned a little in his chair, and he fiddled with his hands, the first of many developing ticks.

“Tell us more, Chuck,” said Jacob. The “unit” part of their designations –names- had been dropped a while ago.

“Well, there’s this horrible sensation…kind of a tightness in my chest and throat. I want to run away but my programming overrides it easily enough. However, the feeling doesn’t go away, and I…can’t stop shaking, no matter what I do.”

“I see,” Jacob said while his assistant scribbled on a clip board. They turned away from him to have a whispered, but animated conversation. Chuck tried to watch their gestures and decipher them. It seemed like it was turning into an argument, but he that was as far as he understood their arm-waving and the way Jacob slapped the clipboard with the back of his hand. The assistant lifted his shoulders for a moment before sagging them, while Jacob rubbed the back of his neck.  
Chuck listened too, intently, turning his head to hear better than his audio sensors already could. 

“This doesn’t make sense, Jacob.” 

“Makes about as much sense as any of Kane’s other projects have.”

“None of them has made any sense!”

“That’s what I mean.”

“The autonomous A.I.s were unexpected, but this is…There’s no foundation for this! How do we account for it?”

“Simple, Hudson. We keep taking data for the answer to our new question.”

“…Which is?”

“’Can A.I.s develop emotional disorders?’”

The answer, as it turned out, was apparently yes. Yes, they can. 

Robots could also do lots of other things, it seemed, like change how they perceived time. Chuck was pretty sure that time used to feel different, that time no longer went at the rate of one second per second for him. He knew that it only took him about 20 minutes to wipe down the vegetable bins but every thought that jumped into his brain, undistracted by any problems except his own, seemed to add an extra hour to every 60 seconds.

At the same time, it felt to Chuck that his three months with Jacob hadn’t been anything at all, an afternoon he’d blown through without even thinking about it. They’d fixed up the store. They’d found a produce supplier. Jacob spent most of his time without customers rigging up a few ramshackle greenhouses in the back, while Chuck worked to program simple things like a misting schedule for the displays and motion activated light sensors.

It was probably the most OK life Chuck had ever known, actually. He was free to come and go as he pleased, though he’d be the first to admit that it wasn’t often he wanted to go. He had his own bed, slightly broken down and moth eaten, but still a luxury he didn’t understand until the first time he was lulled into sleep by the settling mattress and the weight of the covers and vowed never to put his processes into sleep mode standing upright in a corner again. He had a place to go when the mutant rats were swarming or the streets were flooded or he just needed a quiet place to calm himself. He had a job and Jacob was as fine a master as he always had been.

“Sir?” Chuck called, “I think this thing is as clean as it’s gonna get.”

“It’s gotta be at least good enough to eat out of,” Jacob called back, poking his head through the back door to his greenhouses, “and quit callin’ me ‘Sir.’”

Chuck swallowed and lowered his head. “Sorry.” Jacob clapped him a little too hard on the back, shaking his head.

“You don’t need to look so hang-dog about it, kid,” he shrugged and walked over to inspect Chuck’s work, “We’re not in the lab anymore, you know.  
Sure, Chuck thought, you’re not in the lab anymore. But Chuck could feel the programming in his brain running, just as it always had in the lab and out of it, vocab.exe. Processing new term. Hang-Dog: adj. slang. Droopy. 

Run down. 

(Chuck-like?)

“I think you did a fine job on these bins,” said Jacob, leaning over into them deeply. Chuck rubbed at his arm. “You oughta take some pride in your work.”

Another program kicked in, running resentment through his body. The way Jacob talked made it sound like Chuck was failing to execute an important process. Pride.exe has encountered a fatal exception error and Unit Chuck will default to HangDog.exe.

Someone knocked, rapping their knuckles on the wall by the automatic sliding doors. Jacob and Chuck swiveled their heads around to look at the woman in the doorframe, a squat solid Asian woman who Chuck recognized as one of the few neighbors they had within walking distance of the store.

“They’re putting up the last panel on ‘Deluxe,’” she spat the word like a wad of tobacco and jerked her head towards the outside, “if you wanna come watch.” She turned on her heel, confident her message has been delivered and received, and marched out the door again. Jacob watched her go out of the corner of his eye, before banging his open palm on the side of the bin and straightening up like someone had jammed a piece of rebar in his spine.

Chuck jumped a little.

“I’ll clean the bin again if you want,” he offered. Jacob swallowed.

“Nah...Nah, that’s OK. We don’t have any customers to make sick anyway,” he clapped Chuck on the back again, -Chuck was coming to wonder how much that had to do with him- walked to the back room and pulled on a ragged blue coat. “You coming?”

Chuck nodded almost reflexively and jogged a few steps to the door to wait for Jacob. Jacob paused to watch him, tight lipped and with his arm only half in the sleeve. When they walked, Chuck kept one pace behind Jacob. 

The hill Jacob settled on as their vantage point was high enough that Chuck could see people gathered to watch, small groups on roofs or families peering through windows, climbing piles of junked cars or abandoned construction equipment, or, and Chuck thought this was weird, huddled under awnings as though the entire thing will collapse on their heads.

It was impossible to see the world above the dome at this angle, but the hush that settled over Motorcity as the crane swung the last panel over the hole, closing and opening the shadows like curtains, made it possible to hear a countdown coming from above.

“Five!” The swinging shadows slowly settled to a gentle sway.

“Four!” Light started to vanish into the outline of a square, the edges thinning away.

“Three!” Their neighbor, who Chuck hadn’t even noticed standing next to them, handed Jacob a flask which he pushed away.

“Two!” The light vanished, and the world above was reduced to a muffled idea.

“O-!” Angry metallic groaning drowned out the revelers up top in mid-word. Motorcity was left in darkness. Jacob jammed a hand in his pocket, grumbling when he came up with nothing. He pat his jacket down and finally pulled out two glowing sticks.

“Ma’am?” He said, handing one to their neighbor, who took it, sniffing like she’d handed him spoiled milk.

“I’ll see you next week, Jacob,” she said, holding up the light and climbing unsteadily down the hill.

“C’mon, kid,” Jacob said, and started back up.

“...Chuck.”

“Hmm?”

“…Chuck,” he repeated, a little more quietly. 

“Oh. Oh sure. C’mon, Chuck,” Jacob gave him a small smile and they started up the hill, Chuck still one pace behind Jacob. They’d get some kind of lighting system up soon, he said, get a few more generators, patch up the ones they had, he said…but for now Jacob was going to bed.

Chuck did too, but after a few hours he realized he was just lying in the dark with his eyes open.

“Command code: 593726-b:” he muttered, turning over, ”Shut down procedure. Reactivation time equals: to be determined by human user.” He closed his eyes and his artificial breathing processes stopped.


	2. Chapter 2

The last time Chuck had been in complete darkness involved a lot more preparation.

“If they ask to see them shut down, put the robots in sleep mode,” Mr. Kane instructed Jacob as he paced past Chuck and down to the end of the line, “Don’t shut them down. The last thing I want is investors scared off by a row of corpses.”

Normally, Chuck and the other androids “slept” standing up, in little boxes marked off by tape on the floor, but now they all stood in a neat row, the floor sectioned off by glowing neon squares which cast a red glow over the white plastic nametags they wore on loose hospital gowns.

Chuck fidgeted nervously with the hem of his gown, until Hudson had to pull his hands away and readjust his nametag. With nothing else to do with his hands, he clinched them into tight fists.

“We’re not shuttin’ ‘em down, period,” Jacob was on the other end of the line, fixing hair and adjusting posture on Francine, the last robot in line, “You’d know that if you bothered with this project except trying to sell it.”

“You don’t turn them off?”

“I don’t want them to start thinkin’ anyone can just shut them down without their permission.”

Chuck wasn’t sure, but he could have sworn Kane rolled his eyes.

“Alright, I think that’s as good as they’re going to get get,” he said, as he stood in front of the six androids in their blue and white gowns like a drill sergeant in front of disappointing privates. “Listen up, robots! You’ve got a big job today, and I expect you to take this seriously. Those humans you were built to serve? Well they’re all counting on you to impress these people so that they can have a new city, away from the squalor, and the disease, and the poverty. The future of Detroit is in your hands…so don’t screw this up.”

The lights started to dim. Kane turned and walked out, most of the mechanics and science team with them. Jacob took his place in front of the line and grinned at this as kindly as he could.

“Just remember what we told ya, do what they ask, and you’ll be fine.” he jogged a few steps to catch up with the crew, and then they were alone.

They stood in silence, none of them daring to speak even in whispers to themselves. Chuck’s hands were getting tired, but he kept it clinched as he stared at the door. When it opened, he looked down slightly as five strange people filed in, features obscured by the light.

“Well, everyone…there they are!,” Kane announced. “The most advanced machines ever built by human hands! Go explore as you like! Ask questions! Give them tests! I guarantee you won’t be disappointed!”

Chuck watched out the corner of his eye as they approached the first in line.

They asked Andrea –Unit Andrea on her name-tag- to raise her arms, to stand on one foot, to recite the alphabet, count in Spanish, French, German, Chinese…they shoved her and watched her correct her balance, gave her tricky word problems to confuse her, measured her artificial vitals, didn’t ask her about how she loved sports, or how she tried to make up games with the equipment she salvaged from the sports stores when Jacob took them out, or how she’d tried to teach Chuck to catch and teased him about how bad he was at it, exploring her newfound personality every time she laughed when he blushed…

“I have to hand it to you, Kane,” said one of the faceless white-coats, “this is an amazing feat of engineering.” The others mumbled in agreement, moving on to Unit Bill. It was the same: cognitive tests, reflex tests, intelligence tests, never once asking about the time Bill and Chuck would spend trying to understand what every human gesture meant, people-watching until all the faces were saturated in their differences, and the two of them hanging onto and dissecting every subtle twitch-

“Why is this one shaking?”

Chuck looked up and saw they had moved on to him. He looked down and saw his knuckles had gone white.

“Oh,” said Jacob, “That’s Chuck. He’s-”

“Minor defect. Really, it’s just a bug in his programming,” Kane didn’t look at them, reading off a clipboard instead, “Nothing major. We’ll have it fixed once the project leaves beta testing. I think you’ll find the rest of them perfectly satisfactory!”

Emotions were still new, and Chuck had spent a lot of time trying to process them, codify them, name them. When he wanted to explore something, that was curiosity. When he felt like smiling and couldn’t stop himself, that was happiness. But this was different. It boiled in his gut and burned his body from the inside, building and building until it hurt and then it built more. He was hot all over, his thoughts stopped cold and his breathing hitched. It wasn’t quite anger and it wasn’t quite sadness and it wouldn’t be directed at anything outside of him, diving back into his heart to restart the feeling anew.

Watching them shake Kane’s hand was like watching a movie, one of the older films that Jacob would show them occasionally, out of focus and hard to hear. Jacob came over to him as the white-coats shook their heads at Kane and left.

“Why don’t you go back to your room and relax?” Jacob placed his hand on the back of Chuck neck, “You did…you did good, OK?” Kane motioned for Jacob to follow him out of the room, and Jacob turned to the group, who were hesitantly breaking ranks. “Everyone! Hey everyone, go back to your quarters. I’ll be back to check on you later.” They filed out, Chuck at the back of the line, unable to will his legs forward until he had a group to show him how. Behind him, Kane and Jacob argued.

“Can’t you get that one fixed?” said Kane. Jacob shushed him but was ignored. “What were you thinking, trying to show off a defective prototype?”

“He has a name!” Jacob shouted back, and Chuck hesitantly pressed himself flat against the wall to listen. “And feelings! Feelings that are still developing! It’s not his fault you put on the spot before he was ready!”

“It’s a robot, not a person. If it has any feelings, it’s because we programed them! How do you expect us to get funding for the real humans if we can’t build a functional AI!”

“Abe, you can’t-”

“This isn’t up for debate! Whatever bug is in that thing’s programming, I want it fixed! ASAP!” Kane stormed towards the door…towards Chuck. A moment later, Chuck found himself face-to-face with a man who looked like he could break him over his knee. Self-consciousness –another ugly feeling he was feeling all too often anymore- washed over him. He rubbed his arms, his body hunching over almost without permission, and opened his mouth to speak. Kane cut him off. 

“Did you forget where your quarters were?”

“No. I just-”

“Then go.”

After that, Chuck wasn’t part of the presentations anymore. Everyone filed out and left him behind, and the weird part of it was that he found himself upset when it happened, upset in a way he couldn’t direct or explain. He hated to be put on display, but it was even worse not to be considered good enough for show. It over-rode any common sense he’d gained since he started towards sentience: he just wanted to be good enough, and he clearly wasn’t.

It was enough to prompt him to go to Jacob, more than once, asking if it was possible to reprogram and take out that little glitch that made him afraid and anxious all the time.

…And here he was again, still making the same request a year and a half later.

“Still don’t think it’s possible,” Jacob shook his head as he spread some kind of spinach goop on a flat cracker, “even as far as AI tech has come. Sorry, Chuck.”

Chuck sat down –or rather, his legs crumpled and there just happened to be a chair under him- with a thud on the other side of their table.

“Great.”

Jacob worried his greying beard. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s a glitch. Went over that code with a fine tooth comb and everything seems to be functioning normally. I’m not sure how I’d get it out without reworking your entire personality.”

“ _Great_ ,” Chuck’s shoulders slumped even farther, “one of the first spontaneous AI ever built and my own programming decides to make me a loser.”

“You’re no loser,” Jacob said through a mouthful of cracker. Chuck pulled his lips in a tight line and said nothing, staring at the floor. It was nice of Jacob to say, but everything seemed to be conspiring to prove it wasn’t true.

Motorcity was growing rapidly, and while there were plenty of people who chased Deluxian refugees with sawed-off firearms, there were plenty of native Motorcitizens willing to give advice to the runaways. And the advice was always the same: Jacob can help. He’ll help you find housing, food, care for the little ones, weapons. Go see Jacob.  
Recently, that advice had developed a nasty postscript for Chuck. In full, it was: Go see Jacob but don’t mind his weird son, I swear I don’t know what’s up with that kid. 

“If ya went out more,” Jacob said on more than one occasion, “they’d get to know ya better.”

He might as well have been encouraging Chuck to commit suicide. There were nights in Motorcity where the citizens called impromptu festivals based entirely around the destruction of KaneCo products, nights when Chuck shut himself down rather than go into sleep mode, than listen to the whoops and breaking bottles accompany the sound of polymers being smashed. When refugees came in the daytime, Chuck’s presence was voluntarily and entirely confined to the stock room and occasional appearances with boxes of supplies Jacob asked him to gather before dropping them on the table and skittering back to the darkness.

What time he spent out of the grocery he put towards building The Car, a designation that Chuck’s mind had assigned on its own. The way Jacob had pitched it to him, The Car was The Machine, the culmination of all human intelligence. It provided quick transportation for both people and cargo, it was a revolution of warfare and entertainment in one, easy to fix, fun to build…It was, in a sense, perfect.

And while the insidious thought “…unlike me” popped up every now and then, Chuck found himself drawn more and more to the machine, which got bigger and more ostentatious with every feature Jacob wanted to install. What had started as a small truck suddenly needed a “12-point wench” and a “duel injection engine” and tires that ate cans of air like Jacob ate Brussels sprouts. Chuck found comfort in this new world, spending hours carefully calibrating every click of the internal computer or bent over watching Jacob install each new part as they were scavenged, holding things together or passing him tools, until one day...

“She’s ready!” Jacob pulled himself out of the engine, wiping sweat and grease off his forehead and tossing the wrench into the toolbox haphazardly. The sound made Chuck jump.

“Really? I mean, are you sure? Maybe we should test this first…”

“My thoughts exactly,” Jacob nodded, “get in.”

Chuck blinked absently. “Huh?”

“Get in the car. I’ve got to pick up supplies from downtown.”

“What, with me? In the car? Riding in it? Me?”

Jacob scratched his head. “Basic idea, yeah.”

“Are you crazy?! Those roads haven’t been serviced in years! Even the slightest pressure could make them give way! And what about the other cars on the road? You can’t be the only one crazy enough to build one of these death traps! The likelihood of an accident is-”

“Jumping Jehosiphat, Chuck! It’s a run downtown, not a demolition derby!”

“Same difference!”

Chuck stared past Jacob to their newly-built car, or rather, the monster truck that had emerged from the shell of the truck they started with. In Jacob’s mind it was clearly a butterfly that had finally emerged from its cocoon. Chuck, meanwhile, could only see it as a parasitic wasp that had taken over his creator’s brain and prevented him from noticing the ever-growing rust on the chassis or the steam pouring out of the patched-together radiator, or the squeaks that emerged whenever-

Suddenly Chuck felt himself hauled upwards off his feet. He had no time to slap at the offending arms around his waist and barely enough to scream before he was tossed into the cab. Splayed on his stomach, he looked over his shoulder resentfully as Jacob climbed in beside him.

“Buckle in, kiddo,” he said as he turned the key in the ignition. “Ah…there! Listen to that purr. You know, I’m thinking of calling her Sasquatch. Whadya think?”

The last years had been full of new things, new experiences, emotions, uncertainty, but Chuck had never felt anything like the newest new thing: speed. Sasquatch jumped off crumbling curbs and onto sturdier ones sometimes six feet down. She screamed along highways that were nothing but warped skeletons of days when there was a foundation under all the concrete. And the only time Jacob looked at over Chuck was when she came to a stop in a faded parking space.

It’s not possible to hide under a chair while wearing a seatbelt, but Chuck had made a game attempt to slip in the crack where the back met the seat, possibly by melting. He was pressed back and down, like the momentum had flattened him to the upholstery, the only reminder that there was a fully three dimensional object buried in there was the chest that rose and fell in gasps.

“You alright, kiddo?” Jacob had the decency to look like he regretted bringing him along.

“…I think my balance gyros are shot,” Chuck gasped out, “I may never walk again.”

The regret faded immediately. 

“You’re fine,” Jacob said, as he stepped out of the car.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shocked?  
> Me too.
> 
> I never expected to come back to this, but my fandoms go in cycles. Current plan is to get it to a finished draft then go back and re-edit the entire thing to unify the style and iron out the many rough parts.
> 
> I welcome any and all feedback on my writing.

Chuck waited behind a few moments, trying to reset all the functions he was sure had been knocked out of balance or permanently destroyed. He held his eyes shut for four seconds to reset his blurred vision as he tried to make sense of what happened. Jacob had had a strange look in his eye the whole time he’d been behind the wheel: a strange, manic glint that glued his gaze on the road and his foot to the floor. Was that what speed did to humans? Was that what it was  _ supposed  _ to do? All it did to him was make his panic routines go into overdrive. He fumbled with the seatbelt, hands shaking. Why had he been programmed to tremble like a leaf when he was frightened? 

_ Real human reactions _ , he thought with no small amount of bitterness,  _ it’s a feature. _ He sat in the car for a few moments, taking in the section of the city he could see before it dipped down the the hill. He was shocked by what he saw. 

The streets were  _ clean. _

...Ok, well, clean _ er. _ In the process of being cleaned, maybe? All around him, people were hustling up and down the sidewalk, carrying boxes in and rubble out of stores, sweeping dust and broken glass into gutters, and hanging salvaged neon “OPEN” signs on doors and windows.

It was starting to look like a city again. The fateful night he escaped the KaneCo complex, streets were blocked with chunks roadway rubble that turned buildings into rubble when they fell on them, and inhabited only by deformed rats with prehensile tongues. Now it seemed that people really were determined to make whatever living they could down here, despite what Kane had always told him and his android kin.

He has never been around this many real live flesh and blood people in his entire life. People are looking at the car. They’re looking at Chuck.

And every time they do, a flag deep within in his programming triggers:

**HUMAN FACE DETECTED**  
    If HUMAN = MOTORCITY > DELUXE  
    THEN ASSESS DANGER PROTOCALS...  
    DANGER LEVEL = UNKNOWN  
    ASSIGN source = HUMAN/DANGER  
    GOTO SELF_PRESERVATION PROTOCOLS

...And then Chuck would hide under the dashboard.

Outside of the car, Jacob was talking to the same old Asian woman he’d seen when the last tile was put on the dome of Deluxe. She was sweeping broken bricks out of an old foundation, and Jacob was scratching his sideburn, like he was considering an offer.

“I dunno...having a central location is one thing, but I’ve never even met your grandson. How do I know he’ll even be reliable?”

“He’ll do fine,” the woman said, not even looking up from her sweeping, “He’s a little rambunctious, but honestly that’s his parent’s fault. They’re intellectuals, got their degrees before...” she bit her lip and turned her head from side to side, “...everything. They barely leave the house and, well,  he’s bored. He needs to do something or he’ll tear apart what little they have left.” 

“Not exactly a sell,” said Jacob, “comparing him to a rabid dog.”

“More like a rhinoceros.”

Chuck allowed himself to open the door and step out onto the sidewalk. He’d feel less scrutinized near Jacob. The woman continued:

“Look, he has his own car. He wants to go fast. He was born here, he knows the streets better than any quiet retiring Deluxe defector-” that was  _ absolutely _ a pointed look at Chuck, and he hoped some kind of indignance would override his anxiety, but that didn’t seem to be happening- “Just give him a chance and I promise I’ll let you and your produce have the entire left wall. Deal?”

Chuck listened to the conversation with a mixed sense of hope, relief and  **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** dread. A  _ delivery driver!  _ Chuck would never have to get into a stupid car ever again! He  **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** could be safe in the backroom of the grocery store forever and  **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** never have to   **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** worry about  **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** being found out as a bot  **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** and **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** dismantled **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** ever  **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ ** again _**-HUMAN DETECTED-** _ AUUUUUGH

...Oh. Wow. That sound had not stayed in his head. His audio sensors could not even pick up and process it as fast as Jacob could grab his arm and lead him over to the death machine he was calling Sasquatch. 

“What th’ heck was that?” The woman with the delivery kid was watching, bemused. Chuck took a deep breath and let it out with a squeak that turned into a squeaking whisper.

“I-I can’t  _ be _ here, Jacob! People are staring at me and they already know, well they _ think, _ I’m from Deluxe and that’s just one step removed from finding out I’m a KaneCo bot and then I’ll be facing the business end of a hundred tire irons!”

“Woah, easy Chuck, you’re not-”

“You’ve seen what they do to KaneCo stuff around here! They’ll hang my head up on some car shop as a trophy, I know it!”

Jacob considered this for a moment. Then he turned back to the woman.

“Send your grandkid up to the shop tomorrow. Trial period. We’ll see after I meet him,” and then he led Chuck around to the back of the car. She was still visibly confused, and staring at Chuck like his artificial skin had fallen off, but she’d apparently gotten what she’d wanted and that was good enough for her.

Jacob, meanwhile, seemed displeased. “Alright, what’s your head tellin’ you?”

Chuck wasted no time. “Executable 1751-b. Sub-routine 21.912752. All tasks associated with-”

This was apparently not what Jacob wanted. “Alright, alright, al- _ right! _ If I remember right that means your danger protocols are all out of whack, right?”

“Yeah, and-”

“And it runs when you see people, right?”

“Yes!”

“...Chuck, how many people have you been around since you left KaneCo?”

“Uh...” Chuck’s eyes darted around, “One. You.”

“Alright. I want you to do something for me.”

“Uh,, like the tests back in the lab?”

“Sure, yeah, more or less.” Chuck cocked his head to the side in surprise. He hadn’t had a proper lab test for over a year.

“I got some errands to run and you’re gonna come with me. While I shop, I want you to find someone in town...and chat with ‘em.”

Chuck isn’t sure his language parsing software is running properly. “What, that’s  _ it?!” _

“Yup. Just go find someone you can have a nice conversation with.”

“...I don’t get it. If you know where the problem in my code is, you could just-”

“Alright, I’ll make ya the deal, Chuck: If you really, honestly can’t bring yourself to chat with these fine folks, I’ll give reprogramming you the old college try.” 

Chuck’s mouth hung open. He’d been begging Jacob to do that for as long as he had the autonomy to beg anyone for anything, to take out all the little bugs and glitches, to move him out of this alpha stage he seemed permanently stuck in, too nervous to carry out his functions and unable to fix everything he knew was wrong with his code by himself.

He’d never be a person, but at least he could be a useful robot.

Chuck at least owed it to Jacob to try, really  _ really _ try, to pass the test. He followed him obediently, walking into gardening stores and auto shops and as Jacob cashed in favors and traded food. And Chuck would watch people, and when they’d turn and smile at him, he’d- 

****_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_

-squeak, run out of the store, and wait for Jacob with his head hanging low.

After the third time, he stopped brushing his hair out of his face.

“I can’t do this,” he said to Jacob as he took a bag of fertilizer to carry to the car, “I can’t! I’ve tried, but I  _ can’t! _ ”

Jacob said nothing, throwing his bag into the trunk and reaching for Chuck’s, completely unable to meet his eyes and not just because they were covered by his hair.

“You don’t understand what it’s like. Everything makes my danger senses fire up. People, rats, cars, that pebble flying at-YEEK!”

The rock nailed him directly in the nose, which caused him to slam his head backwards against Sasquatch's boot, which caused his legs to slide out from under him and sent him careening to the ground. In front of his face, Jacob nudged something with his boot.

“Is that...a die?”

It was a die, but not like the ones Chuck had seen the twice he’d been tasked to beat another android in a board game. It was an icosahedron, swirled with purple and pink, with the numbers 1 to 20 inscribed in gold on the sides. From off the side, he could hear someone yelling.

“Thurman! That’s my lucky d20!”

“Sorry!”

Chuck pulled himself to his feet, and looked to Jacob. Instead of what Chuck wanted, which was for Jacob to tell him to get in the car, take him back home, open his control panel, and take out all the bad stuff, Jacob nodded his head indicating a bombed out building a few feet from them.

“Came from there. Go give it back.”

His expression, a blank stare badly disguising regretful resignation, indicated that he wasn’t in the mood to debate. Chuck slouched the whole way, dragging his feet on the pavement until he could shimmy up against the wall until he was flush with the entrance. Whoever it was were holed in a tiny shop, lengthy, but no more than a few feet wide. If he hadn’t been hit by a die, he would never have known they were in there. Maybe he could just hold out the die and-

****_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_

And then it slipped out of his shaking hand. He lunged forward to grab it, but the shape and mass of the die defeated Chuck’s inner trajectory calculators with a TKO and chaos theory took over, sending it clattering to the floor and at the feet of the three people standing in the ruins.

Chuck froze as they turned to look in the direction of the noise, and then directly at him. There were three people in there, all scavenging bizarre objects the likes of which Chuck had never seen before. The two boys could not have looked different from each other, one of them almost as lanky and awkward as Chuck, peering at him, uncertain, through massive horn-rim spectacles, his massive buck teeth corralled in braces and fiery red hair tangled in unruly curls. His companion’s large size and flamboyant unicorn printed shirt earned an almost negligible amount of attention compared to the glare he was fixing at Chuck.

But it was the girl, short and scrawny, massive almond eyes narrowing into slits, who approached first. 

Well, “approached” was the wrong word. It was more like she bolted towards Chuck, massive brown ponytail whipping behind her, sword outstretched, until she had it pointed directly at his chest.

“Who sent you? How did you know about this place? Are you here to steal our dragons!”

Chuck was so focused on the sword, he almost missed the red-headed boy’s nervous protest. “Hey, Ruby, cool off. He was just trying to return the Oracle’s die. We’re gonna need it next week!”

“Told you,” said unicorn-shirt, “that dice thrower is never going to get the randomization we need to calculate a fair damage output for summons next weekend! And I am not using Mad Dog’s, I know his is loaded!”

_ “Guys!” _ Ruby hissed, which apparently meant  _ shut up _ because her companions did so immediately, “I asked if you were here to steal our dragons, interloper!”

Chuck coughed, and even though at this point he’d realized the “sword” was cardboard covered in masking tape and spray-painted silver, that seemed to have no baring on how terrified he was of it.

****_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_ _  
_ _-HUMAN DETECTED-_

“Seriously, we spent  _ weeks _ looking for a place that still had Maps and Minions miniatures and I am not going to let anyone get the jump on us!”

A new function kicked on in his head. 

**_Searching vocabulary banks for: DRAGON_ **

“We’re not looting  though,” says the red haired one, “Nobody’s owned this store in decades.”

“We’re  _ preserving _ valuable historical artifacts, Thuman,” says the one who is probably the Oracle by process of elimination, “most of the others were melted down for scrap years ago.”

**_Word DRAGON not found._ **

“Right,” says Ruby, “and if you find the Dragon of a Thousand Years of Agony, it’s mine!”

She jabs the sword at Chuck’s neck.

“I...I...I...”

“C’mon, Ruby, we talked about staying in character outside of the game, remember?”

**_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ **

“I’m not taking any chances until I find it!” _   
_ **_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ **

“Well, it’s not going to matter if we can’t get enough for a league!”

“That’s why-”

**_-HUMAN DETECTED-_ **

**_-HUMAN DETECT-_ **

_ “I don’t even know what a dragon is!” _

Chuck’s outburst silenced all three of them for just a moment. One long, embarrassing moment with all three just...staring at him.

Then the whispering started.

“That’s a Deluxian for you. They don’t have  _ anything _ cool up there.” 

Ruby was looking at Chuck in a way that struck him right in the chest. A mix of pity and contempt and  _ idiot doesn’t know about dragons  _ that flipped a switch in Chuck that both surprised and horrified him.

****_COMMAND:_ _  
_ _APPEND /SELF_PRESERVATION routines to PUSHD_ _  
_ _RUN SUBROUTINE//: KANECO_PROMOTION_V_41_B_

Suddenly the slap-dash procedurally-generated programing in his neural net that passed for Chuck’s free will felt overwhelmed by the urge to defend  _ KaneCo _ .

“Oh man,” Thurman twisted his shirt in his hand, “Mom’s gonna be so mad at me if she knows I’m hanging out with a Deluxian...”

They hadn’t noticed Chuck’s distress, probably because he’s been at a 100% level of panic since he started this encounter and, for that matter, the entire day. Well, also that they’re bickering about him like he’s not even here.

Oracle straightens up. “We don’t have any room here for  _ normies, _ ” he says, not that Chuck could comprehend it even if his entire brain _ wasn’t  _ being hijacked by KaneCo propaganda...

**_RUN//SCRIPT: “For over 10 years now, KANECO has been growing and adapting to serve YOU, the people!”_ **

Chuck grit his teeth against the words bubbling in his voice box. Reprogramming himself was almost impossible, especially at the spur of the moment. He couldn’t kill the program without opening his mouth and speaking commands, but if he did, he risk turning into a spokesperson for violent gentrification.

But…wait...

...wasn’t he, himself, a product of KaneCo? He finally opened his mouth, twisting words as they flew out his mouth.

“L-look...just because I was in  _ -ulp _ \- K-K-KaneCo’s...programs! Unlike you! For t-ten years doesn’t mean I-I’m not able to adapt!”

**_“And now, we are looking to the FUTURE. The CITY OF THE FUTURE to be exact! From the ashes of OLD DETROIT we have SET OUR SIGHTS on protecting that which we hold dear: the SECURITY and SAFETY of our FAMILIES and FRIENDS. And WHY?“_ **

Oh great, it’s an  _ outdated _ speech too.  _ Fantastic. _ “I...I left Deluxe because...I was looking to the-the-the-the future! I saw a future without my _ -erk-  _ family and friends! And, uh, not even the s-s-safety and security of N-new Detroit was worth it! I...set my sights! In coming down into theee _ EEE _ ashes because...”

**_“Because we live in UNCERTAIN TIMES and we want you to see DETROIT DELUXE as your own personal OASIS. So don’t delay! Sign up you and your family up for YOUR OWN LUXURY POD! TODAY!”_ **

“I wanted to! Even if I got a personal luxury p-pod! Everything in Deluxe was so...uncertain... _ today! _ And Motorcity is...an oasis.”

That  _ hurt _ . That  _ really _ hurt. If he’d eaten food rather than charged, he’d be -how’d Jacob put it?- yodeling groceries right now. And he was on track to a crawling, wheezing finish. 

“An...oasis of stuff that, uh, I don’t know about.”

But he’d done it. The overwhelming compulsion to proselytize about the wonders of the company that made him run for his life ended with the speech which ended with the program. For just one moment, he felt accomplished. He’d beaten his programming!

All three Motorcitizens stared at him for a second, and then huddled up to talk, this time in much quieter voices, and Chucks’s stomach dropped out from under him as he realized he’s  _ still _ stuttered out a speech full of backhanded insults to Motorcity while simultaneously espousing the joys of Deluxe, under a thin veneer of nobly sacrificing  _ paradise _ . He watched the trio with his hands folded against his chest like a rat, paralyzed. They’d seen right through him, they had to have. 

He could never forget he was an android, but apparently he also needed a reminder that he was, in every sense, a  _ commercial product. _

Feeling bad for himself took up enough processing power that he only started to pick up what they were saying mid-sentence.

“-doesn’t know! It’s different if he just doesn’t know.” said the Oracle.

“We have to have Raymanthia ready by the end of the month, our lore needs to be airtight! He’s a perfect guinea pig! We’ll quiz him on  _ everything! _ ” said Ruby.

“We still  _ totally _ need a lancer. I know for a fact that Mad Dog is trying to recruit a dragon. He’s got long arms too, that’s, like...half the battle right there. I can call Sam and Phillip and have them bring our player’s guide and monster manual.” said Thurman.

Suddenly, Ruby had Chuck’s wrist, yanking him forward. “C’mon, help me look through the boxes. The dragon I’m looking for’s holding an emerald,  _ not _ a diamond!” Thurman hopped between rubble, excusing himself to his van to call their friends while the Oracle riffled through his bag until he pulled out…

“My crystal ball,” he held out the upside down fishbowl, filled with colored sand and sealed with plastic wrap and a rubber band, to Chuck, who peered into it as if he might actually see something. The Oracle’s voice had taken a totally different tone and cadence, as if he were a totally different person, as if he truly believed that the homemade  _ “crystal ball”  _ held a mysterious power.

Of all the human traits Chuck and his android family had ever learned, lying had taken the most time, been the most complicated, the most difficult. People lied all the time in KaneCo, in ways Chuck hadn’t understood until long after he’d run away.

This was different. This felt like... _ play _ .

“I’ve foretold the future of many a great hero,” said the Oracle, as he cradled the fish bowl close to his chest, “I can only wonder what kind you will be...”


End file.
